Research-Informed Teacher Learning

Book excerpt: Research-Informed Teacher Learning explores career-long improvements in knowledge building and the skills required in curriculum reform, transformations in teaching methods, alterations to assessment, and restructurings in school administration and management. This extends to meeting the needs and interests of different and diverse students and groups of students, mentoring student teachers and beginning teachers, and supporting experienced teachers, so they are all responsive to their local school-communities, thereby contributing to democratic schooling and the public good. The book mainly focuses on the professionals working in teaching and teacher education from pre-service training and development through early-mid career and into later stages of career mobility. It pinpoints the ways that practitioners need to be involved in the design and delivery of changing models of teacher education which helps in the development of their own professional activities at all levels of the teaching service. Dedicated to the late Professor Carey Philpott, the book takes his ideas forward, particularly in the current conjuncture when teacher learning is curtailed and constrained by power brokers, politicians and policy makers in various undemocratic ways. This book will be of great interest for academics and researchers in the fields of teacher education, educational policy and politics, and lifelong learning and development.